


First Anniversary, Hipster Style: Facial Hair

by 221b_hound



Series: Captains of Industry [27]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Hipsters, Anniversary, Australia, Barista John, John Has a Beard, John's Mustache, Lingerie, M/M, Makeup, Melbourne hipster cafe scene, Rimming, Suit Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:59:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7739071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Sherlock's first anniversary is coming up. Forget the traditional 'paper' gift. John is growing a beard for the occasion: blame the Substitute Hemsworth for that, or thank him. After Sherlock and John have put the newly grown facial hair to its proper and planned use.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Anniversary, Hipster Style: Facial Hair

Sherlock is stretched out fetchingly on their bed. He looks artlessly rumpled, but also like he’s been placed _just so_ by Caravaggio. John knows perfectly well that the ‘natural’ sprawl – sheet positioned just above the pubic thatch,  one leg showing knee to foot from underneath the honeycomb sheets, hair a mass of bed-head curls, cheeks and chest both flushed pink, lips too – has all been arranged for effect. He doesn’t mind of course. He loves that Sherlock makes such wonderful efforts to seduce him, even though he’s a sure thing.

“John.”

Sherlock’s tone is sleepy-husky. An excellent trick. John doesn’t care that Sherlock’s bunging it on. He _loves_ that voice.

“Please John.”

But it must not be forgotten that John Watson is a man of iron will. He has a plan. He has a goal. He has a superhuman capacity to delay his gratification.

He has a hard-on he could use to drill rivets into the watertight hull of a warship. He could use it to shove a Challenger 2 Battle Tank out of the way if it stood between him and his hot-as-fuck boyfriend.

“No.”

Nobody appreciates just how iron John Watson’s will is. John’s not appreciating all that much himself right now. He reminds himself that it’ll be worth the wait.

“Just a little?” Sherlock can sense John’s strength wavering. He can also see what his voice is doing to the outline of John’s tailored trousers.

“ _No_. Be patient. Think of the stubble rash.”

“I am thinking of the stubble rash. In several places. I'll take photographs.”

John’s brows draw together in puzzlement. “Why?”

Sherlock almost doesn’t hesitate. “...For science.”

John’s moustache quivers a moment before his laugh escapes. He drops a kiss onto Sherlock’s forehead. “It'll be worth waiting for,” he says.

Sherlock’s disgruntled sound is lost as he nuzzles up into the bristles on John’s jaw. Bites at the very short hairs there then licks.

“Don’t do that,” laughs John.

“Smells like nutmeg,” mumbles Sherlock, still lipping at John’s beardy face.

“I know.” John selected the Dark Amber and Cardamom bottle from Melbourne Beard Oil very carefully, not only for the scent but for how the oil keeps his skin and growing beard soft and pleasant, minimising itch.

John, it turns out, grows a beard like he was born to be a bear. John’s grateful that his facial hair grows quickly, but it’s still not quickly enough. After a week and a half, the bristles on his jaw are at the cusp of turning from itchy fuzz to soft hair. He’s keeping it soft with the oil, trimming it when he performs his daily Moustache Care Routine and getting used to how it looks.

The temptation to do as Sherlock keeps begging him to do - bend Sherlock over and nudge his beardy face into Sherlock’s luscious arse - is strong. But he doesn't want to give Sherlock terrible beard burn and they made a pact to wait. Anniversary day is coming soon and then he'll have a full soft beard to go with his divine moustache. 

“All right, no rimming,” Sherlock concedes. Sherlock doesn’t care about the beard burn in his sensitive places, but he also loves it when John goes all Captain Watson. “But you can’t go to work like that.”

As evidence that Sherlock Holmes loves John Watson with all his heart, he sits up in bed, letting the sheet fall aside, and gives his iron-willed boyfriend a splendid blow job to ease the discomfort, while jerking himself off, making obscene noises all the while. He even manages to not spill anything on John’s suit, because he is just that good.

John is not late for work, but it is a good half hour before his knees work properly again. He blames it on an unspecified war wound.

He does not fool anybody.

*

“What’s all this in aid of anyway?” Sally asks over her third cup of coffee, eying the growing beard with suspicion.

“It’s their anniversary soon,” says Molly cheerfully. “A year!”

John busies himself with barista-ing while Molly and Sally discuss John and Sherlock’s year of dating and cohabiting and generally being very stupendously in love. When even Sally thinks it’s adorable of them, John feels that all this public sentiment is getting way out of hand.

Then Sherlock comes through the Captains of Industry door, leans across the counter to kiss him hello and swaggers to the Baker Street Agency office in the corner, strutting his delight that he gets to kiss that perfect barista while everyone else only gets to watch. John decides he doesn’t mind the public sentiment at all. He pours Sherlock’s coffee, takes it to the office, and deliberately leaves the door open so anyone passing can see him thoroughly kissing the smartest and most beautiful man in two hemispheres.

“But seriously, why are you growing a beard for your anniversary?” Sally persists

“Sherlock asked me to,” says John simply. No need to tell her _why_ Sherlock asked him to.

“Doesn’t he like your face anymore?”

John can’t explain that it’s kind of the opposite. He’s saved from answering anyway when Greg appears, leaning in the doorway of his studio, to say, laughing, “It started with that Substitute Hemsworth case, didn’t it?”

John looks for something to throw. The rhubarb-and-cream-cheese muffin hits Greg square in the forehead. Mycroft is there in a nanosecond, attending to his injured sweetie. He takes a minute to lick cake and icing from Greg’s forehead and hums.

“Good batch,” he tells Mrs Hudson.

“Tell me more about this Substitute Hemsworth!” demands Sally.

Disgruntled, John returns to his espresso machine and refuses to say another word. Greg tells the story, or as much of it as he knows.

The case of the dead working-visa-tourist on the beach was both strange and absurdly simple. The poor man’s death had been put down to venom from a blue ringed octopus, which, yes, was straightforward and easily proven through toxicology.

But how had he been exposed to the venom when the scary little beggars’ habitat was usually in South Australia, Western Australia or New South Wales was a question that bugged the fuck out of Sherlock when he read about it.

So come the weekend, Sherlock and John poked around St Kilda and all the dead man’s recent haunts. They met with a surf lifeguard, Dylan Faye – a sun-kissed blond, looking like a long lost Hemsworth brother with a golden, Thor-like beard. Dylan and the victim, Tony De Castella, had both been friends with the same Swedish barmaid, Inge, who had since moved on to fruit picking in Tasmania. Dylan planned to join her shortly, once he could find a pet-sitter. No ordinary pet-sitter. One who knows how to pet-sit snakes, fish and unusual cephalopods.

Among Dylan the Pseudo-Hemsworth’s odd and pungent collection of pets, he proved to have an octopus. He further proved to have harried the poor deadly thing with homemade equipment to extract the poison; and to have used it on Tony via a broken shard of beer bottle. _Abracadabra_ , no more love rival.

It’s the Baker Street Agency’s first police-related case. Sherlock’s observations have been instrumental in having a cruel and sly man arrested for murder. DI Dimmock, of the Jim Moriarty incident, was fortunately on the spot to keep Sherlock himself from arrest on suspicions of… being suspicious.

The second rate, substitute Hemsworth demonstrated just how second rate he was by panicking and throwing a live blue ringed octopus at Dimmock. The thing’s rings flashed bright blue and pulsated with its distress and panic, like a tiny, deadly one-cephalopod disco, but failed to make skin contact with anyone or anything. One of Dimmock’s more nature-loving colleagues manoeuvred it back into the tank with the aid of a tennis racket.

Dylan Faye, having been denied bail as a flight risk, is now awaiting a trial date.

The case didn’t earn the Agency a cent, but they are rich in kudos and now there’s someone on the Force who knows that Sherlock Holmes is no ordinary Concerned Citizen and Nosy Parker.

But that’s not the whole story with the Substitute Hemsworth.

*

“A love triangle,” says Sherlock with irritation after they get home. “How mundane.”

Mundane, maybe, but it’s an impulse John is currently viewing from a distance with a certain amount of sympathy. He doesn’t for a minute believe that Sherlock fancied that murderous toerag of a beach-blond fucker, but he also can’t help feeling that Sherlock spending so long gazing longingly at said toerag’s golden beardy face chafes, like sand in his Speedos. John thinks he’s hiding his stupid jealously very well. Perhaps he failed to notice the low, gruff noises he kept making right at the back of his throat every time Sherlock stared at the pretty git.

“Don’t be like that,” Sherlock says, suddenly soft-spoken and, to be honest, preening a little that John is possessive – but not _too_ possessive – about him. “How could he possibly be a rival? Look at you.” He gaze undresses John with one sweep, and touches him everywhere sensitive on the second.

John tries to pretend he’s not pouting, or mollified, but he is in fact both.

“You hardly think I’d be tempted by a second rate, substitute Hemsworth?” Sherlock prompts.

“No,” John concedes. The growl is still in the back of his throat.

“He had a nice beard, though,” says Sherlock thoughtfully. “A beard like that would suit you.”

John rubs his hand across his chin. He brushes his moustache with his knuckle and twists the end of his waxed-to-perfection moustache.

“Think of it this way,” says Sherlock, “You know how I react to your moustache. Now imagine my reaction to a beard rubbing up against my bollocks.”

John imagines. He decides a trial run is probably justified.

John brings Sherlock to heady orgasm by driving him to keening, splay-legged ecstasy through the act of stimulating him with his excellent moustache, right behind the bollocks, thank you very fucking much. The fuzzy-lipped rimming that follows is worthy of gold stars, fanfares and works of holy art painted on fucking _ceilings_.

Then Sherlock gets to have sort-of-jealous, impatient-but-disciplined, hot and moustachioed John fuck him through the mattress as his reward.

Life, they both think, is fucking excellent. Sherlock thinks that it only needs one more thing to make it perfect.

John and Sherlock agree that John will grow a beard. It can be a kind of anniversary gift, next month. A year they’ll have been together. They intend to celebrate with Beardy Rimming.

*

Two weeks later – a month after the Substitute Hemsworth case – John’s beard is short but soft. Neatly trimmed and combed, golden brown with just a hint of red. Sherlock can’t stop running his fingers through it.

John’s still saving up the Anniversary Rimming, even though they’re past the worst of the stubble burn stages. Sherlock’s anticipation is now so keen that from the morning of their anniversary, he’s half hard and fidgety. He goes jogging while John’s at work and has to come home early because thinking about the evening is resulting in an even chance of getting so overstimulated by the cloth on his chubby that his running shorts are more indecent than usual.

So Sherlock cleans the house, does some work, shops online for lingerie and heels, takes five cold showers and reads three entire books on deadly Australian animals (male platypuses have poisonous spurs? Really, Australia? _Really??_ ).

He makes ravioli from scratch. He makes pavlova from scratch. (That gets him well overstimulated too; that whole-body response to meringue, fruit and cream has never quite left either of them.) He kneels on the sofa, staring out the window at the light glinting from the mirror ball that hangs in Rankins Lane, and he waits and waits and waits for five o’clock.

*

Greg has forgiven the rhubarb muffin bullseye.

“Drives Mycroft absolutely apeshit with lust when I do up my eyes,” he says, putting the last touches on the wings of John's eyeliner, “He went so hard so fast last time he nearly passed out from the sudden shift in blood.” Greg grins, very pleased with himself, but John can't tell if that's because of the make-up job or the memory of making his boyfriend literally faint with desire.

John could do with knowing a lot less about Greg and Mycroft's sex life, frankly, but on the other hand... well, now he knows which standard has been set. And he intends to beat it. With the outfit he's chosen to go with his eyes and his facial hair, he just might.

 _Note to self_ , he thinks, _Make sure Sherlock doesn't hit his head on the way down._

He walks home in a suit threaded with blue and green, a pair of hand-made, blue-stained pumps (he’s practised walking in them). Deep blue shirt. Dark red suspenders. Under the suit he has traded his silk boxers from something rather special. Silk knickers, dark blue. There’s a little folded gap in the front which makes them not-exactly-crotchless but definitely promoting easy access.

The outer man is also perfectly presented. Hair combed, moustache waxed, beard groomed to perfection. His eyes are painted in smoky blue and silver and gold, surprisingly subtle, and his blue eyes are bluer, deeper, more sultry to the power of a billion.

Sherlock is arranged on the sofa in that artfully artless way of his when John walks through the front door carrying wine and a heart full of joy. But the moment he’s on the threshold, Sherlock flings himself off the sofa and towards John like a heart-seeking missile. Sherlock is unable to maintain come-hither loucheness when all he wants to do is go-thither and wrap himself round John.

John manages to shove the wine onto a surface (a bookshelf) and wraps his arms around Sherlock. Their mouths meet, and their tongues, and their breaths, and they kiss right there in the doorway, making happy little grunts and moans of pleasure and welcome.

“Happy anniversary,” one or the other manages to breathe out before the kissing robs them of breath again.

Then finally, Sherlock draws back long enough to see John’s smoky-blue-framed eyes.

Sherlock does indeed go down in record time, but not by fainting dead away. He has John's cock in his mouth in ten seconds flat. Through the slit in the crotchless knickers. John's the one who nearly falls off his heels, looking down at those beautiful eyes looking up at him in wanton wonder, with that perfect pink mouth stretched around John's thickening girth.

But they haven’t waited a month for Sherlock to now end it all so quickly by giving John the blow job of a lifetime. John draws Sherlock back up in his arms and kisses him. He smooths his hands over Sherlock’s mostly bare body and delights in every warm shiver.

For while John has dressed for their anniversary in suit and pumps and panties, Sherlock has opted for… the bee sock. That’s it. Just the penis sock knitted to look like a bee. A currently very alert, very upright bee.

It ought to be ridiculous. It _is_ ridiculous. It’s silly and sexy and hilarious and perfect. John is holding Sherlock’s nakedness hard against his tailored perfection, his hands massaging and playing with Sherlock’s fantastic arse. Sherlock is taking the opportunity to wriggle his skin all over the suit.

“I’m going to rub my beard all over you,” promises John. “I’m going to rub every bit of you.”

The bee gets more rigidly upright. Sherlock stands splay-legged and breathing hard, his hands caressing John’s beard. The bee bobs and then John reaches down to fondle Sherlock’s fuzzy bollocks and that happy rigid bee jerks up towards Sherlock’s belly and bobs lower again.

The bedroom is just across the living room floor. The sofa is four steps away. Both are much too far away.

Sherlock ends up on the living room rug, all plush pile so it’s gentle on his skin. He’s starfished there, writhing and panting and chanting John’s name as John kneels beside, across, over Sherlock, directing him here and there as he fulfils the pact. Kisses on goosebumped flesh. Moustachioed lip, bearded cheek and chin, all brushing softly over calves and thighs, the soles of Sherlock’s feet, the back of his neck. His nipples, his armpits, the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. His belly, his knees, his palms, his wrists. The small of his back and the cleft of his arse. Nudges and tickles, rough pushes and soft caresses.

Sherlock’s bee sock is an upright flag of approval until John brushes his beard against Sherlock’s balls, then carefully takes the sock in his teeth and tugs it off.

He rubs his cheek against Sherlock’s stiff, hot shaft. John brushes his waxed moustache over the sticky slit of the crown. He licks the head, suckles it, bumps his chin against the underside, rubs down again, slowly moving his head from side to side as his moustache sweeps down the frenulum.

Sherlock’s hips jerk and his legs spread wide.

John nuzzles into the gap and then pushes Sherlock’s thighs up, exposing Sherlock’s lightly haired, pink little hole. John sticks his tongue into it – the resulting guttural howl of pleasure is very rewarding – and then he pushes his face right in there. Fuzzy cheeks and chin make contact and John nudges his face around, like a cat only of course not. Sherlock is helplessly writhing and making the best noises _ever_.

John nudges his beard all over Sherlock’s little hole and his plush arse and his perineum and his bollocks and his shaft and crown. He keeps on doing this until Sherlock’s slit is cascading dew and John suckles it away, pulling Sherlock’s cock into his mouth and throat until his moustache and beard are nearly flush with Sherlock’s body again. He slowly sucks and pulls away until Sherlock's rock hard cock pops out of his mouth.

Although dishevelled, John is still in his suit and panties and pumps and eyeshadow.

“I’m going to have you,” John part growls at Sherlock, and Sherlock grabs his own ankles to hold his legs high and wide in inarticulate approval of this plan.

John burrows his beardy face right back in there, making Sherlock’s hole wet and slick. He reaches for the lube he knows Sherlock put ready on the coffee table and finds it has fallen off and rolled under the table – he finds this by touch alone, since his whole field of vision is currently Sherlock’s tightening balls.

John only stops licking and tonguing Sherlock’s fucking brilliant arsehole when he’s got fingers dripping with lube to massage into it. John massages Sherlock, he fingers him, he gives him a delicious little finger fucking while sucking and nibbling on Sherlock’s nipples and Sherlock is damned near crying from need and anticipation.

Finally, John pops the top button of his trousers, unslings the red suspenders and shoves his suit trousers down his thighs.

“Look, baby. I want you to see.”

Sherlock manages to focus and what he sees is John’s mussed blond moustache and golden red beard all damp; his lips puffy and flushed from their spectacular ministrations. He sees John in silky blue knickers with his cock jutting up from the peekaboo gap in them, and John’s dark blue shirt framing his hips and the panties and his cock, and he sees John’s blue eyes framed in makeup like an Egyptian god and he sees desire and hunger and love and love and love and love and love…

“John.”

It’s a heart cry somehow. It’s _yes_ and _now_ and _want_ and _love_ and _you you you you you…_

The squelching noises of John rubbing lube all over his cock sound like music to Sherlock, who pulls his ankles up higher. John shifts his hips and lines up and then sinks, slow, so slow, so perfectly slow-then-fast into Sherlock’s body.

“Love you,” John says, the words muffled as he speaks them against Sherlock’s throat. Sherlock thrusts up with his hips. “God, I love you.”

“John.” He hooks his ankles over John’s shoulders, wraps his arms around him too, almost sobs with need.

John holds him. Moves. Reaches between them to adjust Sherlock’s cock so that it’s better positions for friction between them; between Sherlock’s bare belly and John’s silk-knickered abdomen. John adjusts him again, so Sherlock’s cock rubs against John’s belly too, under the draping blue shirt.

Then John sucks kisses into Sherlock’s throat and chest and fucks his darling boy, his perfect genius, his miraculous soulmate, right into the carpet.

Sherlock comes, his body jerking so hard with the intensity of it that he nearly bangs his head on the floor. John, far gone as he is with lust, senses the danger and wraps his hands round the back of Sherlock’s skull, so that his own knuckles rap on the floor. But said lust makes him impervious and insensible to such distractions. He just switches his angle slightly and pumps and pumps his hips, saying, _fuck fuck fuck yes yes yes…_

He pumps so hard and comes and comes and pumps, jerking his hips, holding onto Sherlock, face buried in Sherlock’s neck, hips still going… when finally his body fizzes down to limp, sated acquiescence, they’ve between them pushed the rug half way to the bedroom anyway.

If either notices, nobody says anything. John folds onto his side and pulls Sherlock close. Sherlock flings and arm and leg across John and there they stay. Sherlock bare and flushed pink all over; John in a state of glorious deshabille. Wrapped up together.

Sherlock, without a single care for where John’s lips and beard have been, kisses John’s mouth soft-and-quick, over and over and over, and says between each adoring touch, “Love you, love you, love you, I love you.”

John splays his hands over Sherlock’s warm, pale skin and holds him like he’s the most precious thing in the whole world. Like he is porcelain and diamonds and wonder and hope.

“Happy anniversary, baby.”

Later, Sherlock posts a post-shower close-up picture on Instagram of John's freshly groomed beard. #happyanniversary #beardylove #glorybeard

*

Two days later, when he goes back to work, John remembers to give Greg two dozen boutique beers in thanks for the make-up job, which was part of 24 hours of sex-then-foreplay-then-sex-then-foreplay-then-sex-then-exhaustion-then-foreplay-then-sex, at least half of which was Sherlock on his hands and knees, hands spreading his own arse wide, begging for John to stick his beardy face in there and lick him again. A good deal of the other half was Sherlock holding John's beardy face in his hands and gazing raptly at John's beautiful eyes highlighted in smoky blue and gold and silver eyeshadow, winged eyeliner, and devotion.

All told, it is a very successful, very happy anniversary indeed.

**Author's Note:**

> Here is the [Melbourne Beard Oil ](https://www.melbournebeardoil.com.au/product/melbourne-beard-oil-25ml/)John uses.


End file.
